Andy de la Tour - Stand-Up or Die

I f theres early middle-age, middle middle-age and late middle-age, I am definitely early to middle middle-age. In 2010 my professional life was at a standstill. My varied, or rather maverick, career had almost ground to a halt. Writer, actor, theatre director, I am all those things yet the phone had virtually stopped ringing. Periods of resting or unemployment as most people experience it lengthening in inverse proportion to time spent pursuing my multi-stranded working life. Not wanting to feel sorry for myself any more (in which I am an expert) I came up with a hare-brained scheme. Or rather another hare-brained scheme. A misguided move to Derbyshire had been the most recent, although quite how living in the Peak District would have reversed the lack of work opportunities remains an unsolved mystery. Previously Id even flirted with the idea of moving to France. To do what? Start up a B & B? A cheese farm? Despite my name I dont even speak French. But maybe not a totally insane idea. My partner, actor and novelist Susan Wooldridge, and I are fortunate enough to own a tiny cottage on the Normandy coast where weve spent many happy weeks and months over the last decade.

But none of my schemes addressed the problem. I was profoundly frustrated creatively and any new adventure had to get the creative juices going if it was to be of any use. I was never going to write the definitive baby-boomer novel or follow in Monets footsteps, capturing the astonishing beauty of the Normandy coast on canvas, but I decided to make an unusual creative choice. It involved travelling but not to France and I desperately needed and wanted Susis unconditional support. A flicker of doubt, disbelief or even a word of caution from her would have been enough to strangle such a fragile idea at birth.

I chose my words carefully. We were taking one of our favourite walks, from our village of Sotteville-sur-Mer, along the clifftop path towards the neighbouring village of Saint Aubin, when I said that I had an idea brewing about what Id like to do. The idea of course had already fully brewed and fermented but I didnt want to scare her. I want to rediscover my creative roots, I continued, Go back to where I started in the business and try to remember why I wanted to do it. Im thinking of doing some stand-up comedy. Again. I had an important thing to add before she could reply. But I dont want to do it here, we both understood here to mean London or the UK rather than a field on the edge of a Normandy cliff I want to do it in New York. To her eternal credit, Susi (the only Susi Ive ever known, by the way, who isnt a Susie, Suzie, Suzy or even Susy) didnt snort derisorily, gasp in confusion or even offer a faintly patronising smile. She just looked me straight in the eye and said Great. When are we going?

Susi knew that Id done a little stand-up in the US before but not much of the detail. It was back in 1982, eight years before we met, and Id gone to the US on an Arts Council grant to study stand-up comedy. Hard to believe that in those days the Arts Council gave bursaries to actors, directors, designers, whoever to diversify their skills. My application for the then tidy sum of 500 to travel to San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York to look at the newly emerging phenomenon of stand-up comedy was, according to one Arts Council official, the most interesting bursary application theyd ever received. Usually it was actors who wanted money for tap dancing lessons.

I must have seen 15 shows and 40 stand-up comedians in the space of just over a fortnight. I think I saw all the stand-up comedians that were around. In New York at the time there were only six comedy clubs but twice as many as London and Jerry Seinfeld was on the brink of fame. I hadnt planned to and my 500 wasnt dependent on it but I decided to do some stand-up myself, if I could persuade any of the clubs to give me a spot. In San Francisco I even enrolled in the then increasingly popular San Francisco Comedy Competition. I went on and did my five minutes. The laughter was sporadic and the applause polite. I didnt make it to Round Two. By the time I got to New York, the final leg of my expedition, I was determined to give it another go. I went to the newly opened Comedy Cellar in Greenwich Village and told a very nice woman that I was a UK comic in town for a few days and would she give me a spot? Without a moments hesitation she said Hows Thursday? To put this into present-day perspective, I now know New York stand-up comedians whove been trying to get a spot at the Comedy Cellar for two years.

Thursday night came and I thought Id prepared my short set quite well, especially in light of my San Francisco experience. But I made the cardinal mistake that any performer makes at his or her peril. I was so nervous I had a drink. In fact I had a couple of drinks. In fact by the time I stepped in front of the mic I was drunk. My short set seemed an eternity. It feels like its still going on. I died, was cremated and forgotten in the space of five minutes. Not one single person laughed once. That had happened to me on a previous occasion but that hadnt been my fault (really); Alexei Sayle and Robin Williams were to blame but thats a story for later. I returned to London with a hangover, the experience the night before adding to the sour taste in my mouth. The grim memory was an itch that over the years I would periodically scratch. So when I suggested to Susi that I wanted to do stand-up in New York, it was also to kill a ghost. I somehow still needed to put things right, as if somewhere in the purgatorial sub-stratum of the city there was the soul of a dying English comedian which needed to be put out of its misery.

But something else contributed to Susis immediately positive response to my latest off-the-wall plan. She had never seen me do any stand-up comedy, not once in the twenty years wed been together. The very last paid performance I had done as a stand-up was March 14th, 1990, only ten weeks before she and I first met. Id completed a 100-date tour with Rik Mayall over the course of the previous year and decided to retire from stand-up comedy at the end of our last show, at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon of all places. And now I wanted to do some stand-up for the first time in twenty years and it had to be in New York, the Mecca of stand-up comedy. From her point of view, it was simply too wonderful and crazy an idea not to be wholeheartedly endorsed.